My Brave Pony: The Heart of the World

by Scipio Smith

Ace of Canterlot

Ace of Canterlot

Weapons descended out of the mist like thunderbolts, cutting through the fog that ensnared ponies and zebras and dragons alike to strike home into the sand. Swords and spears, daggers and polearms all flew straighter and more true than arrows as they fell like rain upon they who could not even see from where they were assailed.

From somewhere in the mist Ace heard what sounded like a scream of pain.

It was not alone. The air was thick with them, cries of alarm, cries of panic, cries of agony as the spears and swords descended. They couldn’t be seen until they were practically right on-

A spear, with a red tassel wrapped around the long ashen shaft close to the tip – why? – came flying towards her. Ace dodged aside, her muscles straining to get her out of the way in time, her body contorting, her back bending, her legs spreading out. Time seemed to slow as the spear shot towards her. Ace strained to get out of its way. She could see it coming but slowly now, achingly slowly, as slow as her limbs and body moved, as slow as her wings beat, everything going so slowly as the spear… as the spear passed within a hair’s breadth of her, and then buried its metal tip entirely in the sand as the world speeded up once more.

The air was filled with screaming, and some of it sounded like Twilight’s friends.

No. No, no, no! Ace couldn’t let this happen. She wouldn’t let this happen. She had been assigned to protect Twilight and the others, Princess Celestia and Shining Armor had trusted her with Twily, and even if they hadn’t needed her help so far they surely did now.

They needed somepony’s help, at least, by the sound of it.

“Twilight!” Ace yelled, trying to raise her voice to cut above the clamour of the zebras all around. “Twily!”

“Ace?” Twilight shouted back. “Ace, where are you?”

“How should I know?” Ace demanded. “Show me where you are?”

Through the mist, she saw it: a lavender light, glowing brightly, bright enough to cut through the fog that surrounded them. “Here,” Twilight said. “Here I-“ her voice was cut off by a startled cry, and the light she had cast died with it.

“Twilight!” Ace shouted, spreading her wings and taking flight, rising a little off the ground – she thought it was a little anyway, it was hard to say when you couldn’t actually see the ground – and flying as fast as she could in the direction Twilight’s light had come from. Her borrowed zebra armour was a little heavier than she was used to, zebras obviously didn’t need to fly while they were wearing it, so they could afford to load the extra weight on, but she was able to get a reasonable speed up nonetheless.

Besides, it wasn’t the best thing to fly too fast in a situation like this, with spears and swords and knives flying everywhere: a wounded zebra staggered into her path, bleeding profusely from a wound in his shoulder; Ace would have run into him if she’d been going any faster. As it was, she couldn’t help him right now, she had no skill at healing, and anyway, she had to get to Twilight.

So she flew, her wings beating through the mist, water droplets colliding with her face like rain, flying straight – she hoped – towards where Twilight was.

“Twilight!” Ace shouted.

“I’m here, Ace,” Twilight replied, and the sound of her voice drew Ace the rest of the way, drawing her to where Twilight was, with a sword and a pair of daggers buried before her. “Sorry my light cut off,” she added, as Ace got close enough to see her, which mean in practice close enough to touch. “Those things came at me and I-“

Another sword, a long, straight blade with a gilded hilt and a ruby set in the pommel, emerged from out of the fog straight for her. Ace pushed Twilight out of the way, and lunging into the path of the blade with her wings spread out, her body twisting in midair like a salmon leaping from the river as she kicked the blade aside.

“Trust me,” Ace replied. “I get it.”

Twilight’s eyes were wide, and when she spoke again her voice trembled with anxiety. “Have you seen the others?”

“In this fog?” Ace demanded. Her tone softened. “No, no I haven’t seen them. Weren’t they with you?”

Twilight shook her head. “We got separated, when the attack started we had to scatter to avoid being hit. I don’t know where they went. Spike? Girls? Can anypony hear me?”

“Twilight,” Ace said. “If this fog is being created by magic, then can you dispel it? Do you know a counterspell or something?”

“Magic that is being cast by an artefact is harder to dispel than a simple spell,” Twilight began.

“What makes you think it’s an artefact?”

“Because it’s Raven, and Raven uses artefacts,” Twilight replied. “Or she seems to. She did. I don’t know, maybe it is Raven or maybe it isn’t, do you really think the mist is our biggest problem right now?”

“It would help if we could see what we were up against,” Ace said, loud enough to be heard over the panic and the pain. “Do you know what’s causing all of this?”

“I might,” Twilight said. “It… it reminds me of Lightning Dawn’s power, he could summon a sword from out of nowhere, it was bound to him, but the way he described it I don’t know how anypony could summon so many weapons like this.” Twilight took a deep breath. “What are we going to do?”

“Can you conjure a shield around yourself?” Ace asked. “Like your brother can?”

“I know the spell, but even if I could see the entire camp I couldn’t-“

“Never mind the camp for now, just put a shield around yourself, I’ll find the others and bring them to you,” Ace declared. “Can you make the shield big enough for them?”

“What about Mantle and the zebras?” Twilight demanded. “We can’t just shelter while they-“

The words she might have said were stolen from her as other sounds joined the high-pitched clamour of the assault: the sound of hooves thudding upon the sand, soon followed, joined and drowned out by the shrieking of the grey-robed zebras who had sought to fall upon the ponies in their camp, before Mantle and his own zebras had taken them by surprise.

Now, it seemed, the grey-robed zebras were repaying the favour. Their shrieking war-cry threatened to drown out all else, save that it cause the cries of pain and panic from Mantle’s followers to seem to redouble in volume and intensity.

Mantle roared, in anger or pain or both, and his fire flared in the mist off to the right for a moment.

Two grey robed zebras charged out of the mist, high keening cries rising from their throats. One was running on three hooves, the final one wrapped around a spear; the other had no visible weapons, but would rely on their own hooves and their teeth.

Ace didn’t give them the chance. As they emerged into view, as they changed from grey approaching shadows to flesh and blood zebras, Ace was moving, her wings unfurled like banners as she shot forward like the weapons that were currently falling upon them. She lowered her head as she collided bodily with the unarmed zebra, knocking them down in a tangle of thrashing hooves. Ace headbutted them, hammering their face with her metal helm, leaving blood on their jaw and their body still. The zebra with the spear shrieked in anger as he tried to turn, but too slowly, and his spear was too long for this situation in any case. Ace leapt at him, staying low, getting past the spearpoint before it was in a position to skewer her, closing the distance only to rise up and deliver a strong uppercut with her right forehoof that knocked the zebra onto his back and laid him out cold on the sand.

A third zebra emerged from out of the fog, closing on Ace from the flank, but a bolt of lavender magic struck him square in the breast and flung him backwards into the fog.

Ace looked at Twilight. “Thanks,” she said.

“Any time,” replied Twilight mildly. “What now?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You’re the one who’s trained for this!”

Well, not exactly, but thanks for the vote of confidence, Ace thought. She could hardly complain out loud. She didn’t have a lot of business complaining mentally either, for that matter.

This is what you wanted, now deal with it.

“Stand firm!” Mantle bellowed into the fog. “Rally to me, my zebras! Rally to me and drive them back!”

Ace couldn’t imagine that his cry was going to do much good; yes, his followers had seemed loyal to him even before he started to improve himself – in the eyes of the ponies, and it seemed in the eyes of his own followers as well – and if they had been able to see what they were doing then they could still have overcome the ambush, formed up, maybe even counterattacked. But they could not see what they were doing. They couldn’t see their lord, they couldn’t see each other, they had been scattered and wounded by the initial attack and now they were being assailed by an enemy who had the advantage of surprise and quite possibly coordination too.

If things kept on like this then Mantle’s zebras were going to lose this battle, if they hadn’t lost it already.

So what did she do? What was she, Ace Ray, going to do about it?

How was she going to turn this situation around?

Another spear flew through the mist to land not far away from them. Whoever was doing this was going to end up hitting their own allies at this point, now that the battle had been joined.

Unless they could see through the mist because they had conjured it, and wasn’t that a wonderful thought.

Conjuring… conjuring… that’s it!

“Twilight,” Ace cried. “Can you track back where one of those weapons has come from?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean like the maths,” Ace explained. “The angle that it came down at, so it came from a certain point.”

“I… yes,” Twilight said. “You want to track one of them back and then-“

“And then hope to find whoever is throwing them at us in the first place,” Ace agreed. “If I can take them down-“

“That’s a big if,” Twilight warned.

“Maybe,” Ace agreed, because they were past the point at which bluster and vanity were going to help the situation, “but I think it’s our best chance, Twily; it might be our only chance.”

Twilight hesitated for a moment. Still the air all around them was thick with screams and cries. “Okay,” she said, as her whole body shuddered. “Just… be careful, okay?”

Ace grinned. “Don’t worry, I’m going to make all of this okay. Now, I just you to shine me a light on the way to go, a light that I can follow.”

“Got it,” Twilight said, and her horn flared with a bright lavender light. “I just need to wait for-“

A sword cut through the thick fog to land in the sand a few feet away.

Twilight stared at it for a moment, and in her eyes Ace could practically see the calculations that she was making in her head, working out the angle and direction it had come from.

She swung her head around, and from her horn erupted a bright beam of magic, bright enough to pierce the fog, bright enough to illuminate the way for Ace to follow.

“There!” she cried.

Ace took flight, her wings bearing her upwards as she darted around Twilight’s beam of magic until she was above it, flying over it as though it were a rope, a guide rope in the sky. This was her lizard, this was her map, this was her trail to follow, and follow it she did. Though the fog confounded her eyes, though she could barely see a thing in front of her, so long as she could see Twilight’s magic, so long as the light of Twilight Sparkle illuminated the world, she knew exactly where to go.

A spear flew past her, barely missing her by inches. A knife cut across her path and she had to roll beneath Twilight’s magic to avoid it. Nothing, thankfully, came straight for her – Ace was less thankful for herself on that front and more for Twilight, who would have been right in its path if anything had come that way – but they flew around her, which gave her confidence that she and Twilight were on the right track even if it was rough on everypony – and every creature else – still down on the ground under attack.

But that was why she was flying. She wasn’t headed this way for idle speculation, she was doing this for them, for all of them. She was doing this to end things.

So Ace flew straight and true, following the marker that Twilight had laid out for her, rising higher and higher through this mist that seemed to be without end, until, at last, she reached the end.

She reached nothing quite like anything she’d ever seen before.

In front of her, gleaming in the mist, were golden circles. Golden portals, Ace supposed, although magic like this wasn’t her specialty. Nevertheless, there they were, rippling in the air as though the mist had become a pool to them, rippling around the centre of the portal, from out of which the weapons emerged: all the swords, all the spears, all the knives and all the halberds and the glaives and all the rest. Every weapon which assailed them was emerging from out of these portals.

And Ace had no idea how to stop them.

Her plan had rested upon finding the pony who was casting these portals, but there was no sign of them here.

But she, Ace, didn’t think she had risen that high up off the ground; the angle that Twilight had pointed her in hadn’t been too steep. So it was possible, wasn’t it, that the pony she was looking for was below her somewhere, and not too far away, on the ground, casting their spell from above them?

It was the best option that she had at this point.

Ace took a deep breath, tucked in her wings, and dropped.

She fell like a stone, she descended more swiftly than any of the weapons but this way she could be sure to fall in a straight line. The air rushed past her face, beating upon it, and upon her whole body, faster and faster.

Let’s see, she had gone up for… but that was at angle so… maybe count to five? One, two, three… four… five!

Ace unfurled her wings, feeling the force upon them as her descent abruptly slowed, although not slow enough that when she landed on top of a grey robed zebra she didn’t flatten beneath her impact.

Ace smirked. “Thanks for the soft landing,” she quipped.

The three other robed zebras nearby turned to face her.

The three zebras in grey, and the figure in the black cloak whom Twilight called Raven.

The three zebras, deployed protectively around Raven, charged towards her as one. Ace let them come, her eyes darting from one to the other. They had come at her once, but they were not all moving at quite the same speed.

One reached her before the other two, a club gripped in his mouth which he swung wildly at her; Ace ducked beneath the blow, letting the knotted club pass harmlessly over her head, before she reared up to headbutt the zebra on the jaw with her helmet, staggering him and leaving him vulnerable to a follow up with both her thrashing forehooves to put him down. The other two came on together, trying to come at her from front and behind, but Ace simply let her wings bear her aloft for a moment as she struck out with forelegs and rear legs all at once, kicking both zebras simultaneously to lay them out.

"Impressive," Raven murmured. "Clearly there is more to you than bird droppings."

Ace's eyes narrowed. "You know more than you ought to."

"Yes," Raven whispered, her voice suffused with melancholy. "Yes I do, to my sorrow." She sighed. "That light above… that was Twilight working out the trajectory of my projectiles so that you could trace my bombardment back to me. Clever. Which of you came up with that?"

"Does it matter?"

"Not really," Raven conceded. "But I'd rather not praise Twilight." She paused. "You can't stop me."

Ace snorted, pawing the sand beneath her with one hoof. "I won't know until I try."

"Let me clarify," Raven said, taking what seemed like a pause for breath. "I won't let you stop me."

"Big talk from somepony who sounds exhausted already," Ace muttered. And I'm not surprised; this amount of magic would tire anypony short of Celestia; I think Twily would have had to pack it in by now.

Raven was silent for a moment, and still as a statue in the garden in Canterlot; then a golden portal shimmered into existence behind her and a sword, with a pommel fashion like a pair of wings, shot out of it aimed point first at Ace.

Ace jumped, her whole body turning in the air as she kicked the blade back at Raven with her hind legs. Then she rushed towards her prey, wings beating furiously. Raven sidestepped the blade as it flew back towards her – it flew back into the portal it had come from and disappeared – and in that moment she was distracted. Ace fell upon her, descending like a thunderbolt, forehooves ready-

Raven moved with a dizzying speed, one moment still, open, vulnerable, the next moment inside Ace's guard, driving one forehoof – which moved faster than Ace's eyes could follow, a grey blur which left little clue as to Raven's appearance beneath the cloak – into Ace's underbelly where her armour did not protect her.

It was like getting trampled by a stampeding her. Ace had taken blows before – in training, from angry citizens – but never anything like this. Raven hit with the force of a train, her blow knocking the wind out of Ace as her gut crumpled beneath the impact. Ace tasted the salt of blood in her mouth as she was hurled backwards, her belly on fire with the pain, landing on the ground with a rattle of her armour and the screeching of her wing in protest as she landed on it.

Ace lay on the sand for a moment, it was gritty and coarse against her coat but it was nothing compared to the throbbing pain in her gut where Raven had struck her.

She could definitely taste blood in her mouth. Ace took a deep breath, and fought to ignore the pain in her belly just as she sought to ignore the blood in her mouth and the colours flashing before her eyes as she rose to her feet.

Clearly exposing her unarmoured body had been a mistake. One that she wouldn't make again.

She charged once more, but this time she kept low to the ground, wings tucked in at her flanks, head bowed, presenting her armour to her opponent.

This time Raven flung a spear at her, a spear with what looked like a silver apple affixed to the butt of it for some reason. It flew like an arrow straight towards her. This time, Ace did not kick it aside, this time as the spear headed towards her Ace twisted out of the way, but as it passed she reached out with her neck to pluck the spear out of the air by gripping it between her teeth.

The force of it's casting bore her backwards, and dumped her unceremoniously back upon the ground as the spearpoint buried itself in the sand, but at least she had a weapon now.

She used her wings to stead herself, gripping the spear between her forehooves, staying low and covering her aching and vulnerable belly as she faced Raven with the silver spear in hand.

Raven's face was covered by her hood; it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

More portals appeared above her, golden lights shimmering in the mist as weapons flew out of them as fast as thought: daggers with crooked blades, curved swords and straight swords, spears solidly and elegantly fashioned. Ace spun the spear in her own grip, her tail flying behind and all around her like a banner as she spun on her hind legs, knocking sword and knife and spear aside, batting away all the weapons which Raven silently flung at her.

Almost all of them. A knife broke through her guard, slicing through Ace's unarmoured hind leg just above the hoof. Ace could suppress the cry of pain as her leg gave way beneath her; she collapsed, using the spear to prop herself up as the fire of incessant pain spread up and down her limb.

"Stay down!" Raven snapped. Her breathing was coming heavily now, Ace could hear her panting. "Stay… stay down. I don't want to hurt you."

Ace's only answer was a glare. A glare, and to spread her wings and take flight towards-

The spear was ripped out of Ace's grasp, moving as if by its own accord, moving without any tell-tale glow of telekinesis surrounding it as it turned on her like a snake, driving forward beneath Ace's wing into the gap in her armour that had been fashioned for it, passing beneath the feathers and into the coat and flesh beneath.

Ace howled in agony as she dropped to the ground, the spear still sticking out of her like some sort of grotesque skewer, like she was an hors d'oeuvre at some fancy Canterlot part at the palace, her wing jerking reflexively from the pain. The pain… nothing had prepared her for this, none of her training, none of old Ash's stories, none of it. Nothing had prepared her for how this felt, for how bad it felt.

"Why?" Raven demanded. "Why are you making me hurt you?"

Seriously? "You…" Ace groaned. "You could stop any time you want."

"I'll stop, when you stop forcing me!" Raven cried. "I have to stop Twilight, I can't let you, or Pinkie, or anypony else stand in my way! Why won't you listen to my, why won't anypony listen to me?"

"Why don't you try listening to yourself?" Ace muttered, as she struggled to get up.

"What are you doing?" Raven demanded. "Stay down, how can you possibly think of fighting on?"

Ace took a deep breath, and then another. Her body screamed in pain as she bent her neck back, her mouth reaching for the shaft of the spear. She couldn't quite reach it. So be it. She'd have to fight on like this. She took another deep breath, fighting back the tears of pain that were pricking at her eyes.

Tears. Tears in her eyes. Tears in the eyes of Princess Celestia, tears that she thought that Ace couldn't see.

"You are a friend of Twilight's, are you not, Sunshine Ray?" Princess Celestia had asked. She called her Sunshine, not Ace; you didn't ask the princess to call you by a stupid nickname.

"I… I am a friend of the family, your highness; we got on well enough, but I was older than she was, and that matters when you're a filly like Twily was. I don't know if she'd call me a friend."

"Nevertheless, you know what a special little pony she is," Princess Celestia murmured. She looked away. "She is very dear to me." She smiled. "I suspect that is the worst kept secret in the palace."

"I wasn't aware you were trying to keep it a secret, your highness," Ace murmured.

Princess Celestia chuckled. "I… sometimes I think the only pony who does not realise how much I care for Twilight Sparkle is Twilight herself."

Ace kept silent. There was nothing she could say that it was her place to say.

"And she is set upon a dangerous road. I… I confess I fear for her."
"Then forbid it, your highness," Ace suggested.

"No," Princess Celestia replied. "No I could not do that. Her heart… her heart is set on this. I fear… I fear not even my command could sway her from this course, and even if it did… it would break to do so." She looked at Ace, with the tears in those eyes that she thought she had hidden. "Will you go with her, Sunshine Ray? Will you protect her, on this dangerous road?"

And Ace had bowed her head. "With my life, your highness."

Ace's whole body trembled as she rose, her injured leg protested but still she rose to her hooves once more, beating her wings as she best she could with the spear lodged where it was. "Because… because I made a promise. I swore to Princess Celestia that I would protect Twilight, even with my life."

"Your life?" Raven repeated. "You're willing to die for Twilight Sparkle?"

"Being a royal guard isn't an exciting job, most of the time," Ash said, as his two recruits listened carefully. "Most of the time nothing happens, and when it does happen usually it's beyond our power to deal with. Something for Princess Celestia to take care of."

"But we can help, right?" asked Ace.

"No," Ash said firmly. "When that happens, stay out of the way and make sure that everypony else does the same. The last thing we want is the princess to be distracted because she had to rescue some foolish guard with delusions of grandeur. Remember what I said: no-"

"No heroes in the guard," Shining Armor and Ace Ray chorused.

"So you were paying attention," Ash said. "This isn't a job for excitement, this is a job for helping people. It's thankless, and sometimes boring, but it's useful, and it's worthwhile. But sometimes…" he trailed off.

Shining Armor leaned forwards. "Sometimes what?"

"Sometimes," Lancer continued, "something happens, and you have to be willing to give everything. Sometimes, you have to be willing to show the world what you're really made of."

"I," Ace grunted, as her whole body trembled with weakness, "am a royal guard. I will give everything if that's what it takes. Not for glory, not for fame, but because I'm here. Because I'm here, and because you won't stop unless I stop you."

Raven growled wordlessly, and more weapons leapt from the shimmering portals to assail her, but to Ace it seemed as if those weapons moved more slowly now, sluggishly, as if Raven were struggling to move them the way that she once had. Perhaps her weariness was taking its toll; if so it was a stroke of luck Ace wasn't inclined to squint at as she surged forwards, ignoring the protests of her wing and leg. She kept her head down. Swords and spears battered against her armour but did not penetrate it, nor did she allow them to knock her off balance. She could see little with her head bowed, but she kept going, kept moving forward, kept letting her armour shield her from the blows as her armoured carapace rattled like an umbrella battered by a heavy rain.

Ace leapt, barreling into Raven, striking her on the chest with her helmet like a battering ram. There was the sound of something breaking as Ace bore Raven to the ground beneath her. Raven struck at her, hooves like hammers denting her armour beneath the impact, but the pain to Ace's shoulders and flanks hardly registered compared to the pain that she was already in. Her own hooves descended. She couldn't see Raven's face but she could see where it ought to be, and as her forehooves plunged into the darkness of Raven's hood she felt them striking something. Raven spat blood upwards, it spattered on Ace's face and helm.

Ace kept on pounding, she would keep on pounding until Raven stopped stru-

Raven threw her off, casting her aside like an unwanted toy. Ace screamed as she rolled upon the ground, snapping the shaft of the spear lodged in her side as her weight crushed it.

She lay upon the ground, unable to get up this time, unable to move.

But even her eyes, dimmed with pain, could see the mist clearing around her.

"No," Raven growled, as she got unsteadily to her hooves. She was swaying visibly, and when she coughed blood struck the sands. "No! What have you… you will regret this. Someday, I promise, you will regret this." She turned away, fleeing into the fast-unravelling mist, with unfortunately was not unravelling fast enough that it did not conceal Raven from view, covering her like yet another cloak as she made her escape.

Ace lay on the ground, taking deep breaths of air as the world darkened before her. She blinked rapidly. Her eyes felt… her eyelids were heavy. The mist was dissipating but… everything was going dark.

From somewhere away behind her a cheer rose up.

Regret it? No. No, this… this was totally worth it.